Jen Graham, MFA CMA RSME/T

MFA Program Director & Assistant Professor of Dance

Jen Graham is a multidisciplinary movement educator and artist, grounded in somatic practice and process. She creates inclusive and exploratory spaces to instigate shifts in awareness, perspective, and pattern through embodied experiences. Using innovative and unconventional approaches, she promotes curiosity, investigation, and connection to manifest understanding and growth.

Jen holds both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts Degree in Dance from the University of Maryland. She also holds her Certification as a Movement Analyst from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies and is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist through the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association.

Jen has worked in higher education in various roles since 2012, serving as guest artist, choreographer, lecturer, and adjunct faculty in programs ranging from Associates to Fine Arts Conservatories for both Dance and Theatre. She is currently the Director of the Master of Fine Arts Program and Assistant Professor of Dance at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Previously, she was a lecturer in the BFA Dance Program at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, where she also served as a contributor and producer of several interdisciplinary initiatives at the intersection of performing arts and health. She has also taught in the undergraduate Dance Program at the University of Maryland, where she concurrently co-created and co-directed the DeLeComm embodied leadership and communication program for PhD students as an interdisciplinary partnership with the Neuro and Cognitive Science Program. Jen has contributed to developing related leadership curriculum for The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies.

In addition to her work in higher ed, Jen has taught in the private sector for over 25 years. She has previously founded, owned, and directed two private dance schools with their own associated performance spaces, in which she worked with accomplished and diverse faculty, artists, and educators to build highly respected national standards-based dance programs focused on cultivating the unique artistic perspectives and voices of each individual student to bolster thriving communities of movers and creators. Additionally, Jen has served as a master educator at a variety of schools, festivals, and conferences, including The Maryland State Dance Festival and The American College Dance Association Mid-Atlantic Conference. She has also choreographed recognized and awarded theatrical and commercial work for regional dance and theatre companies, studios, and schools, and has coached and mentored title-winning competitive dancers. Jen has performed and presented both commercial and concert work regionally for over 20 years, including performances at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Joe’s Movement Emporium, the Metlife Stadium (televised on CBS), and The Kennedy Center. Further, Jen served for two terms as the President of the Maryland Council for Dance. Jen also continues to maintain a small private practice where she engages somatic-based approaches for individual and group movement and dance training, as well as creative process and performance.

Jen’s work and research interests span the range of what it means to be embodied and alive – from anatomical to abstract, functional to expressive, self to other, personal to universal – and, ultimately, the nature of the relationships these tensions create. She believes that embodied awareness is the key to unlocking potential, personal agency, and fulfillment, and creates the vital foundation upon which empathy, understanding, and connection are built.